Ex-customs Chief Indicted In Smuggling

January 23, 1986|By Jim Leusner of The Sentinel Staff

The former head of the U.S. Customs Service patrol office at Port Canaveral was indicted by a federal grand jury in Orlando Wednesday and charged with helping drug smugglers avoid police detection in exchange for bribes from 1980 to 1982.

Scott McKenney, 32, of Merritt Island, was charged with eight counts of racketeering, conspiracy, cocaine and marijuana possession, bribery and obstruction of justice after a two-year investigation.

McKenney, who was arrested by U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents Friday night, was being held without bail at the Seminole County jail. His attorney, Richard Rhodes of Orlando, said McKenney has denied the charges.

An indictment returned Wednesday evening accused McKenney of taking cash for alerting smugglers to federal law enforcement agencies' surveillance techniques and radio frequencies, and assisting in the planning of drug flights to South America.

McKenney, also a pilot, is accused of making ''counter-surveillance'' flights for the ring to determine if police planes could intercept incoming drug flights.

The indictment does not specify the total amount of drugs imported by the ring or the amount of bribes paid to McKenney, but Felix Jimenez, head of the DEA office in Altamonte Springs, said the group smuggled about a ton of cocaine and about 10 tons of marijuana.

The drugs were worth $42 million to $157 million, Jimenez said.

He also said McKenney is accused of accepting more than $100,000 in bribes before resigning from customs in February 1982.

A complaint filed against McKenney in federal court Tuesday said three informants told authorities that he also inspected airstrips used by the ring in Homerville, Ga., and that he helped coordinate communications with drug planes to and from Colombia.

McKenney also is charged with misrepresenting to federal prosecutors in Miami in 1981 that two smugglers arrested there were his informants on that case. Charges against the two men were dropped and McKenney was paid a bribe for his role in having the charges dismissed, the indictment said.

Two others charged with racketeering or other drug charges Wednesday were Wayne Sturman, 44, a Merritt Island aircraft broker who is serving a 10-year federal prison sentence on cocaine charges, and Dannie Martin, 40, of Casselberry. Jimenez said Martin was arrested Wednesday at Orlando International Airport as he was boarding a flight for Washington, D.C.

Martin, a radio technician, was indicted in February 1984 in Orlando and charged with being a member of a Lake Helen drug ring that imported 100 pounds of cocaine and 20 tons of marijuana in 1981 and 1982. A federal judge later dismissed the charges for lack of evidence.

Several others were charged in Wednesday's indictment, but those portions have been sealed, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Tom Turner.

The indictment accuses the group of making seven cocaine flights and three marijuana flights from June 1979 to April 1983 into Lake and Brevard counties, Homerville and North Carolina. The indictment gives this account:

In January 1980, Sturman and another unidentified defendant offered McKenney bribes in exchange for information on police activities that would protect the marijuana smuggling. McKenney agreed and accepted four bribes from Sturman after drug flights into Lake and Brevard.

In March 1981 McKenney accepted a bribe from another unidentified defendant after convincing federal prosecutors in Miami that two men arrested in South Florida were informants in the case.

Court records in South Florida show that Glenn Gibbs, 28, of Homestead, and Ronald Hansen, a former Chicago police officer who is a fugitive, were accused of trying to buy 100 pounds of cocaine from federal agents. McKenney intervened, the charges were dropped and the men paid him off.

Gibbs, who was later charged in two other drug cases in Florida and Maine, agreed to cooperate with authorities last year. He was killed by a car bomb in Miami last summer, a day after he pleaded guilty to Florida charges and a few days before he was to testify in Maine.

Jimenez said Gibbs was killed the day before DEA agents were to debrief him on the McKenney probe.

The indictment says McKenney, Martin and others brought cocaine into Homerville on April 10, 1983.

An unnamed defendant is charged with possessing 44 pounds of that cocaine on April 11, 1983, in Seminole County. However, on that day, Gerald Anderson, a DeLand lawyer, was arrested in Sanford after DEA agents said he sold them 44 pounds of cocaine. He also was charged with importing 253 pounds of the drug into Homerville. Anderson, 39, did not show up for trial in June 1983.

Several defendants and witnesses in that case are listed as witnesses in the McKenney indictment.